Jack and Bobby: A story of brothers in conflict. Leo McKinstry
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on the organization of Leeds. He told the author Rick Broadbent: ‘I thought I knew a thing or two because I’d been away and I’d suggest things; but they’d just say, “Stop moaning and get on with it – this is how we do it.” The thing is, we didn’t have any coaching in Leeds in those days. A day’s training would consist of turning up, running the long side of the pitch and walking the short side. For variety, they’d say turn around and go the other way. Then we’d go to the tarmac car park and play seven-a-side. Nobody taught you anything and nobody learned anything. It was ridiculous and I got bloody fed up with it.’ The point about training is reinforced by Albert Nightingale: ‘Did we ever go through manoeuvres or tactics? Did we heck. We never practised anything in training.’
In such an atmosphere, it was predictable that Jack should clash with his managers. He regarded Raich Carter as a poor coach, and was not afraid to say so. ‘We never had any team talks and we never had a run-down on the opposition. Leeds was not what I would call a professional club in those days,’ he wrote later. To be fair to Jack, most other Leeds players shared this low opinion of Carter, who was unable to relate to his squad. Team captain Tommy Burden, for instance, left the club in 1954 following a bitter fallout with Carter. In a dressing-room row after a defeat by Bury, Burden was furious that Carter blamed the Leeds keeper for a goal conceded from a free-kick. ‘I said to him, “You’re the one who’s bloody well to blame.” I always felt that Raich suffered from thinking that there were no players any better than him.’ John Charles said of Carter: ‘He was very opinionated. He had the view, “I do it this way, so you do it this way.” He loved himself. He would take the credit for what you’d done.’
Even in the face of such failings, Raich Carter had a strong enough side to win promotion from the Second Division in the 1955/56 season. But within a year, he had been forced to sell John Charles, the player around whom this success had been built. Transferred to Juventus for a world record fee of £65,000 in April 1957, Charles benefited hugely from the move, gaining an international reputation, a trio of Italian championship medals and the award of European Footballer of the Year. Jack Charlton also benefited for, with Charles gone, his place as centre-half now seemed secure. The transfer, however, was highly damaging to Leeds. Without the dominant figure of Charles in defence or attack, the club struggled in the First Division. Carter complained that he was not allowed to use the revenue from the deal to rebuild his side with new players, but by December 1958, the board had lost faith in him and he was sacked.
Bill Lambton, the man who replaced Carter, commanded even less authority amongst the players. A former goalkeeper with Nottingham Forest, Exeter City and Doncaster Rovers, he had been appointed by Raich Carter in 1957 as part of the Elland Road backup staff. Almost as soon as he took over, his inadequacy as a manager was brutally exposed. His unorthodox training routines were regarded as absurd, his tactical advice negligible. Jack said later with typical honesty: ‘Lambton wasn’t a player, he wasn’t a coach, he wasn’t anything.’ One of Lambton’s bizarre ideas was to ask the players to wear running spikes during five-a-side matches. ‘It was so silly. No-one would go near anyone else. I couldn’t see the purpose,’ recalls Bobby Forrest. During a practice session on a windy day, the players complained that the balls had been pumped up too hard, making them difficult to kick. Lambton came on to the pitch and announced: ‘Nonsense. Good players should be able to kick balls like that in their bare feet and not hurt themselves.’
‘Well, go on then, show us,’ said Jack.
This the manager did, taking off his boots and hitting the balls in his bare feet. Though he refused to admit his pain, he winced with every kick and had to limp away at the end of the session. Jack despised Lambton at this moment for his stupidity and stubbornness. For Jimmy Dunn, this sort of foolish behaviour was typical of the manager: ‘He was so bad it was comic. I could not believe he was made manager. I don’t know how he got the job. He knew nothing about tactics, nothing about playing, nothing about football. I had no respect for him. No-one did.’
Jack clashed with Lambton off the field as well. At a team dinner in a Nottingham hotel, Jack created a scene when he was asked by the waiter which starter he had chosen from the set menu. Jack, feeling particularly hungry, said he would have both melon and soup. Lambton heard the request and exploded. ‘You’re not having both. Nobody has both.’
‘What are you talking about?’ asked Jack. ‘It’s on the menu two if you want it. I can have it if I want it, can’t I?’ asked Jack.
‘No. You’ll just have one or the other. Nobody eats those things together. It just isn’t done,’ continued Lambton.
‘It is done in the best restaurants, better restaurants than this one. Now I would like both. Can I have them?’
‘No.’
‘All right. You can stick it,’ said Jack, and he walked out of the dining room in a rage. Later he told the journalist Jimmy Mossop, who, like so many, became a close friend: ‘Ignorance and dishonesty are two things I cannot tolerate. To try and con me into believing that you can’t have soup and melon together is like trying to prove I was ignorant. I reacted because I knew I wasn’t ignorant and I knew how things were done.’
There were other aspects of the club which angered Jack, such as the requirement that he sign an attendance book when he turned up for training, or the failure to clamp down on players who were drinking before matches. Perhaps what aggrieved him most were the double standards. A club rule had been imposed that only players and directors were allowed to travel on the team coach. After a game at the Valley, Charlton Athletic’s ground in south-west London, when Jack tried to get a lift for two relatives who lived in north London, he was firmly told that the rule applied. No exceptions could be made. Yet two weeks later, when Leeds were playing again in London, he found that Lambton had allowed on to the bus four people who had nothing to do with the club – they actually turned out to be waiters from the team hotel. Jack stood up and angrily confronted Lambton.
‘A fortnight ago my relatives had to miss their train and spent hours getting home. Now there’s four complete strangers sitting on our coach.’
‘It’s got nothing to do with you,’ said Lambton, ‘I make the rules around here. You do as you’re told.’
‘I won’t. You made a rule. You made me stick to it. Now you stick to it. If they’re not getting off, I am,’ said Jack, gesturing to the waiters.
‘Please yourself,’ replied Lambton.
With that, Jack made an angry exit from the bus. But then, as Jack stood on the kerbside, a Leeds director intervened. ‘Get them off the coach – and get him on.’
Lambton’s authority, always weak, had been utterly destroyed by Jack’s action. A few days later, in March 1959, a crisis meeting was called at Elland Road, involving the chairman, directors, players and manager. Knowing he was under threat, Lambton made a pathetic plea: ‘If you let me stay, we’ll have a new start.’ But it was too late. Such was the unanimous strength of feeling expressed against the manager that the club had no alternative but to sack him.
Still in his early twenties, Jack had proved that he could be a real influence in the club. Yet, he was still not an especially respected or popular figure amongst his contemporaries. For all his willingness to challenge the establishhient, he was still regarded as too bombastic and ill-disciplined to be a good professional. ‘My problems in those days were of concentration,’ he told Jimmy Mossop. ‘Training could not hold my interest. I could not concentrate on playing in practice matches. They never seemed to prove anything.’ And he had become just as wayward off the field: ‘I was boozing, staying out late and there were girls. I had a bit of a chip on my shoulder and I was causing a fair bit of aggravation at the club.’
Yet for all the problems that he experienced at this time, two crucial events happened in 1958 that were to change his life forever. First, he married. And, second, Don Revie, the most influential figure in Jack’s football career, joined Leeds United as a player.